Exiles
by I Am Your Spy
Summary: In which Rorschach and Dan go on the road in search of Walter's long-lost father. Sequel to Ordinary World.
1. Nostalgia

**Exiles: Nostalgia**  
Rating: R (m/m sex, violence)  
Pairing: Rorschach/Nite Owl  
Disclaimer: Alan Moore owns these characters, I just give them better sex lives.  
Summary: In which Rorschach and Dan go on the road in search of Walter's long-lost father.

_A/N: Sequel to _Ordinary World_ and set in the same marginally happier AU. You can find the first story here:_

.net/s/4917742/1/Ordinary_World

* * *

_"I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty." — Jack Kerouac, _On the Road

This story, like so many others, ends in a vast, windswept cemetery. Most every story ends like that, though, if you let it go on long enough. If you let it go on even farther, it ends in the heat death of the universe, but that particular ending is too far off to contemplate, unless an accident of science has turned you into a near-omnipotent god. And then, you think about it constantly and wonder if you'll be alive to see it.

But though this story ends in an overgrown garden of the dead, in the rain, no less, that ending happens some time from now. There's still time for happiness first.

* * *

_"…morality is the most dark and daring of conspiracies." – G.K. Chesterton_

Like all of Dan's ideas, this one is well intentioned. For the last few weeks, they've been pretending to hide from Veidt, who, for his part, pretends to not know exactly where they are. The salvage efforts continue, of course, but it's no longer the city's sole purpose. He doesn't need to be there, or, at least that's what he tells himself when he feels guilty that he hardly ever leaves the apartment.

Besides, when you're on the run, living under assumed names, wanted by the cops, wanted by Utopia's mad architect, you're not supposed to stay in one place for very long. Staying in one neighborhood is bad; staying in one city, the city _he's_ watching, well, that's suicide.

Dan knows it's dangerous, that they should be running, always running. But in the sunlit apartment in SoHo, in the middle of a rare actual, almost _normal_ conversation with his partner, it's sometimes hard to remember that they're fugitives, that time hasn't stopped altogether.

"I don't believe you," Dan is saying, flipping omelets over the gas range. He's gotten so used to eating proper food again that he worries he's going soft, slipping back into another retirement.

"Don't lie," Rorschach replies from the table, in that flat tone that just _dares_ you to read some sort of meaning into it. "Never lie."

Dan can almost believe _that_. But not the other thing. "But…_LBJ_? Seriously? You're the most conservative person I know. You're, like, right of Attila the Hun." Which should really disturb him more than it does. He remembers when these things mattered. There was a time when he cared about politics, about the fate of the world. Or, at least, there was a time when the forces of history, of war and struggle and change, didn't seem abstract compared to the monumental task of keeping his friend alive and out of jail and relatively sane.

"Father voted Democrat."

"Oh." It occurs to him that he never really thought that Rorschach had a family. His own family has been gone so long, and there have been so many other, more immediate losses, that sometimes—he's ashamed to even _think_ it—he forgets what his parents' faces looked like.

There's a particular sort of silence with which, in the days after the monster, Dan has grown quite familiar. He came across it frequently at Ground Zero, a few hours into a shift when everyone had let the shock and horror settle in for the day. People started to talk to each other, to make grim jokes and reminisce about anything that wasn't dead bodies and twisted metal and concrete. Inevitably, someone would mention a father, a daughter, an old friend, and then—silence. Because almost certainly that person was among the millions dead, and you'd realize it at the same time that your fellow rescuer remembered.

He falls into that silence now, slides the omelets onto two plates, though he's no longer hungry. He sits down at the table across from his partner, who, apparently undisturbed, digs into the eggs like he's afraid they're going to run away.

"Is he…I mean, does he—" Dan picks at his breakfast. "…live here?" he finishes lamely.

"Don't know," Rorschach says around a mouthful of eggs. "Never met him."

"Okay, but—what?"

"Believe he was in the army. Had to leave. Also, mother was…" Right. "Difficult." No one who had a happy childhood ended up like Rorschach. Or like Dan, for that matter. "Died fighting for his country."

_Probably not,_ Dan thinks, but what's the point at getting enraged about cruelties inflicted forty-five years ago? Especially when there's no shortage of tragedies of the less mundane variety.

He blurts, before he has time to really think it over: "We should find out."

Rorschach makes an indistinct noise and reaches for the sugar cubes in the middle of the table.

"Did you ever try to track him down?"

"Only know first name."

"You've tracked down criminals with less information than that." Dan is actually sort of excited by the idea—an actual, solvable mystery, one that could, at least in theory, have an ending. And, more important, one that will get them away out of New York for awhile, and that much farther from Veidt. "Come on, let's at least try. It's not like either of us are much use here right now. We can go today. Let's just…"

He expects Rorschach to put up a fight, to insist that the two of them are making some sort of difference within the vast machinery of the reconstruction effort, or even more absurdly, to suggest that he should be out at night, keeping the fragile city safe from its criminal element—despite the fact that he was unmasked on national TV and can barely even _walk_, let alone throw a punch.

He doesn't. He sort of nods and stares blankly ahead. It doesn't matter to him either way, or maybe it matters a lot, more than he'd ever admit to Dan or anyone else, and Dan stops himself before he thinks too deeply on which one it is because that way lies madness. The important thing is that somewhere, beyond the Five Boroughs, there are unscathed places and ordinary people, and that's where they're headed, outside of hell's radius. Even now, his anticipation almost desperate, Dan knows it's stupid to think that they can outrun the nightmares, or Veidt.

He feels compelled to try.

* * *

It is vaguely horrifying to realize that even after the apocalypse, New Jersey is still standing. Even the tollbooths are up and running again, after a month of being flung open to allow as many people as possible to flee New York. Stuck in traffic, Dan tries not to stare at Manhattan's somber profile. So many of the skyscrapers are darkened, fading into the dimming sky, like someone has knocked the city's teeth out.

After piloting Archie, driving an electric car—one of many left abandoned and dragged to disused parking garages—is painfully slow. He watches airships take flight from Newark, smoke rising from oil refineries. Anything, he thinks, but looking back at the city that he's abandoned, or at Rorschach, ramrod straight in the passenger seat, like a man heading to his execution.

He fumbles with the radio, which is mostly a lot of static and dead air and cloying Christmas carols, and opts for silence in the end. When the long line of red lights flicker out, two by two, he breathes out in relief, but it's still a crawl, their car cramped and stifling, the acrid air of the turnpike seeping through the gaps in the windows like poison gas.

They don't reach the Lillian Charlton Home for Problem Children—renamed Charlton House in 1975—until past dark. The aging car protests at the gravel road leading up to the main building and rattles to a stop.

For a moment, they sit in the powered-down car, pointedly not looking at each other. He hears a crunching sound—Rorschach chewing on a Vicodin like it's a sugar cube—and then his partner shoves the door open and stands outside, waiting for him, his tattered trenchcoat clinging to him like a shroud.

Charlton House, in the summer, is probably verdant and welcoming. In the winter, its bare trees straining against sweeping oceans of snow, it reminds Dan uncomfortably of Veidt's destroyed garden. He follows Rorschach up to the red-brick mansion and is immediately thankful to whatever god watches over wayward vigilantes that he tries the big brass knocker rather than just breaking the door down.

There's the sound of a buzzer inside, and a bolt sliding open. They push past the door and a curly-haired matron says from behind the front desk: "It's past the children's bedtime. Who are you here to—oh." Dan admires her courage as she says, quietly, "You shouldn't be here."

"Here for records. Nothing else."

Not so brave, then—Dan can see her hands trembling as she stands, placing a key ring at the side of the desk. "The vault's in the basement. Do you need me to show you—" Meeting Rorschach's eyes, she stammers, "—no, no you wouldn't, would you?"

Rorschach takes the keys and flips through them. Dan mouths: "Sorry," at the woman, and tries not to be perversely amused by the whole thing. He doesn't think that Rorschach feels particularly vengeful towards this place or it would have been in flames years ago.

The lights go on in the vault with a hum. The poor, terrified receptionist doesn't follow them down. Dan is assaulted by years of musty papers and dust, and he sits on the stairs and inhales the scent of old books while Rorschach paces the long corridors between industrial metal shelves.

It's there, somehow, a piece of his partner's history, only a span of a few years but more detail than Rorschach would have ever managed to tell him in years of truncated sentences. When he comes back and sits down with the file, Dan tries not to be too obvious about reading it over his shoulder.

"Don't need to see this."

"Can I?"

"…no."

And there he goes, feeling guilty again, because Rorschach has had his carefully cultivated privacy violated enough, by cops and psychiatrists and the media and the last thing he needs is Dan getting all emotional and calling him Walter. Even if Dan thinks that would be nice sometimes.

Rorschach huffs and hands him something out of the folder. "Here."

He thinks he sees the shadow of the man sitting beside him in the face of the boy in the black-and-white photograph, hiding somewhere beneath badly-cut hair and a too-large suit. He thinks he does, but maybe he's just projecting. "You were happy here," he says, quietly, relieved that there was one period in his friend's life where he was. He's about to reach for Rorschach's hand, which is probably the very sort of thing that Rorschach is trying to avoid, when the door at the top of the stairs creaks open.

The man, dressed in a housecoat and slippers, is impossibly old, his white hair rumpled like he's just been woken. Rheumy eyes squint down at them.

"Walter," he says. "It _is_ you, isn't it?"

The answer to that question, Dan thinks, is not uncomplicated. Maybe that's why Rorschach hesitates. "Got what we came for," he mutters. "Name of neighbor. Woman who spoke to investigators. Lived in building for ten years." He glances up at the old man. "Going now."

In a tone that suggests that he's about as intractable as Rorschach, the old man says, "You most certainly are not."

* * *

The old man is named Gilbert Syme, and he's the chaplain at Charlton House. He shakes Dan's hand firmly enough to leave his knuckles aching. A big man who could have played college football, and even now, he's still accustomed to throwing his bulk around. He has to introduce himself—because Rorschach just stands there, looking as faintly embarrassed as a guy with the world's best poker face possibly _can_—and then pushes them into his office and accosts them with tea and, much as it boggles Dan's mind, little iced cakes.

It's too surreal.

"You gave Mrs. Cranbrooke quite a scare," Syme admonishes, as though he's talking to a child rather than to the Terror of the Underworld. "You might have called first."

Rorschach chews on one of the cakes. "No phone."

"We haven't had a shortage of visitors either. Not exactly the publicity that the headmaster wants, though of course it's appreciated to be noticed by anyone at all." He scratches a bushy eyebrow. "They asked me if I knew it was you. They all asked the same questions, to all of us—even talked to some of the retired teachers who live in town. As if we could all somehow see through that mask of yours and just didn't bother telling anyone about it."

Silence, then: "Could you? Did you know?" He almost sounds hopeful. Dan suddenly finds the row of books lining the opposite wall very, very interesting.

Syme's gaze remains steely. "Don't be ridiculous." He has quite the bookshelf, Dan thinks. His copy of Kierkegaard's _Fear and Trembling_ looks impressively old, the spine fraying at the edges. "You should turn yourself in."

"Never."

"It's the right thing to do." Rorschach's hand snakes out to grab another one of the cakes. Dan remembers his tea. He's a dedicated coffee drinker, but caffeine is caffeine and it's something to stare at.

"Fighting evil is right. You taught me that." His voice changes, and now Dan _does_ look up because he doesn't remember the last time he's heard his partner speak a complete sentence. "Wasn't that the point of all those sermons? Wasn't that what you sent me out into the world to do?"

It's Syme's turn to go quiet. "Not like this," he says, finally. "Not with violence, and—well, not quite so literally."

"I never harmed innocents. Only scum."

"And now? With what happened in New York, and the ceasefire?"

"The world is still fallen. Maybe more so. Maybe the enemies are even—" Dan clears his throat, a warning. "I saw the end. All of the corpses, the children. Armageddon."

"It isn't," Syme says crisply. "I know it's horrible, but it isn't the end. It isn't hopeless. Not while there's life. Those famine victims in India, do you think anything changed for _them_ that day? Do you think the rest of the world doesn't have to go on?"

Rorschach raises his head, meeting the old man's eyes with an intensity that makes Dan a little jealous. "You could have called the police."

"Mrs. Cranbrooke wanted to."

"Thank you. For not…"

"I told her you'd just break out again. It wouldn't be safe for the officers." He sinks back into his leather high-backed chair, rubs the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefingers. "This life will kill you, Walter."

"Already killed him," all softness gone from his voice, and for a second Dan wonders if he was imagining it, before, whether it was just Rorschach the entire time.

Syme coughs into the sleeve of his housecoat. "Look, you can, uh. It's Christmas, some of the children have gone home. You can stay in the dorms if you leave before wake-up. They don't need—I don't want them to see…"

"Okay," Dan says.

The old man takes them to the dormitory, and at the door, pauses. "I never stopped praying for you," he says.

"World going to hell," Rorschach rasps. "What good does it do?"

The chaplain doesn't answer. He turns and shuffles down the hall and lets the door swing shut behind him. Somewhere, Dan hears a high-pitched giggle, a child up past lights-out. He watches Rorschach squirm out of his trenchcoat and fold it over a chair.

There are two beds in the room and it's the first time in a month that he hasn't slept with Rorschach beside him, just far enough apart that they aren't really touching. But he keeps picturing Syme's disapproving squint and so he stretches out on the other child-sized bed, his feet dangling over the end. He tells himself that it's better than sleeping in the car, at least.

He stirs, some time later, to the grating noise as the other bed is scraped against the hardwood floor. To a hand, reaching across the gap that separates them, to clutch his own.

* * *


	2. The dream of the other

**The dream of the other**

_"Si vous êtes pris dans le rêve de l'autre, vous êtez foutou." – Gilles Deleuze_

He leans against the red oak, among the tall lines of pines and beeches and cedars that stand stark against the snow. A red-tailed hawk lights on a tree, showering him with snow before taking flight again.

It's not so far to come out here and watch the birds. He wonders why he never did, before. If he was with Laurie, he would tell her the name of every tree, and the name of every bird, and maybe later she would recite the names of all of the stars.

He stops himself before he can think too deeply on this. There is no purpose, in this world, to be the sort of person who knows the name of every bird or builds marvelous airships. It's something quaint and archaic, like the old chaplain and his bookshelf, like the chivalric code or knowing Ancient Greek or writing in calligraphy. Or rescuing helpless—

"Daniel. Wasted enough time."

Dan straightens and stuffs his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. They have spent the morning at the university, Rorschach poring over phone books, Dan trying—with some success—to charm the reference librarian and various phone operators. Katerina Nagyova, according to her niece in Florida, became Katherine Appleton—considerably more difficult to find—three decades ago.

She could be dead, Dan realizes; even if she moved from the Bronx long before the monster, she would be at least seventy. And her life, at least the part of it that had intersected briefly with Rorschach's, had likely not been easy.

Rorschach hands him an index card covered with his own impenetrable handwriting. "Nursing home in Baltimore. Almost certain woman is the same."

He looks up, wistfully, at the branch where the hawk had been. "Okay," he says, and tries not to be aghast at the prospect of Rorschach terrifying a building full of senior citizens. He trudges after his partner, snow creeping around his ankles, into his shoes. It seems as though it's been winter forever. The car door sticks when he tries it, half frozen, but the highway is mostly empty.

He almost likes this, the road a dark line intersecting white; silence, that while hardly comfortable, doesn't resemble the clang of a bulldozer clearing a street, or someone's hysterical weeping. Masked under snow, it's easy to look at the world and pretend that it remains unchanged. That _he_ remains unchanged.

He turns onto a quiet street, passes rows of neat lawns before pulling into the parking lot behind the state nursing home. "Please," he says. "Don't scare the people."

Rorschach makes a noise that might be mistaken for a laugh, except that Rorschach doesn't ever laugh. "No face," he replies. "Not scary without face."

Dan isn't so certain about that, but he takes in a deep breath as they walk inside and ask for Katherine Appleton.

"She hasn't had a visitor in years," the nurse says. "She'll be happy to see you. If she remembers, but even still…" The hallways reek of piss and antiseptic, but as they turn the corner and the young woman knocks on the door and promptly evaporates back into the rush of the corridor, they're greeted with the scent of dried rose petals. The door swings shut behind them.

Katerina Nagyova Appleton raises her head from where she sits, hands neatly folded in her lap, in her wheelchair. Her face is a creased roadmap beneath a waterfall of white hair. Her eyes widen and she beams and Dan sees, beneath the wrinkles and age spots, the profile of a once-beautiful woman.

"Oh," she says, her voice creaking. "Charlie. Dear Charlie, you've come back for me at last."

Dan takes a seat on a plastic chair, meant for the visitors that Katerina never gets. She doesn't see him anyway; her attention is on his rather mortified partner. She reaches out a thin, pale hand, as if expecting Rorschach to take it. When he doesn't, she catches his gloved fingers and draws him closer. Dan tries not to be amused.

"Not," Rorschach says as he tries in vain to tug his hand free. "Charlie."

She giggles like a little girl. "You were always a silly one. Say, why is it you? I got married, you know? Thirty years. I thought he would come for me." She squeezes his palm, runs a thumb over his knuckles. "But I'm glad to see you. It's been so long…"

"Katerina," Dan says, and he is _not_ going to laugh, because it's not _funny_. Not at all. "This is Walter Kovacs. He, um, he lived next door to you, in the Bronx. He's Charlie's son."

"Oh," she says, and that gets her to finally release Rorschach. He takes a few steps away from her and looks down at his own fingers like he's vaguely considering severing them. "This…this isn't the end, then?"

Rorschach mutters, "Could be."

"We're looking for Charlie," Dan says, shooting his partner the evil eye. "We don't…"

"Mother claimed not to know last name," Rorschach says. "Thought you might."

Sharp eyes trace his outline, and she sighs, as if disappointed, as if he has instantly transported her back to the present. "Charlie Dewitt. I never knew what he saw in that woman; he was going somewhere, going places. And she, well, just a common whore, really." Rorschach bristles, and Dan puts a hand on his partner's arm, not sure if it's to comfort him or to hold him back. "He was going to come back for me, after the war. But you never came, not until now…" Her face softens again. "Oh, Charlie. How I've missed you, all these years."

"Rorschach," Dan whispers, rising out of the chair. "We have a name, okay? There are records. We can go now." But he stands there, coiled, ready to strike.

"You spoke to police," Rorschach says finally. "Child services. Told them everything." Dan can feel him shaking. "Walls paper-thin. You heard. For years. You _knew_." At the last word, his voice cracks, not enough for anyone who hasn't known him twenty years to notice.

But Dan hears it, and he can't fix this. He stands beside his partner, and he doesn't take him into his arms and hold him, doesn't say anything except a half-grunted, "Let's go." He tugs Rorschach away from the old woman as she closes in on herself again, away from the scent of rose petals.

* * *

  
In the bathroom of their motel room, Rorschach is cutting the remaining faded black out of his hair with the straight-razor that he uses to shave. Dan wonders if he should offer to help, but everything he's said since they left the nursing home has been greeted with brusque noises and so he holds back, watches, fights the urge to just lie down and sleep. He's needed, somehow, to do _something_. To not be the one who listens for years, and says nothing.

When Rorschach emerges, Dan almost wants to smile a little, because his partner can kill a man with his bare hands in a dozen different ways but he can't cut hair worth a damn, and it's sort of endearing. Humanizing. Even if the ginger spikes sticking up in damp tufts from his skull make him look like an aging punk rocker, a comparison he's quite sure that his partner wouldn't appreciate.

"We can go home," Dan says quietly. "Do you want to go home?"

"Have mission. Questions to answer."

"Okay." Though Dan wonders what questions are left. They've already determined that practically everyone in Rorschach's early life, his father included, was a complete asshole. Still, he's slightly relieved that Rorschach wants to keep going. It means that even unmasked, his face and history brutally exposed, even after everything they've been though, his partner hasn't lost any of his infamous stubbornness. "C'mer." He pats the bed beside where he's sitting. It was cheaper to get a room with a single bed. He's not accustomed to paying for things—in New York, so much is left abandoned and empty that you can live on nothing, a ghost in the houses of the dead.

Rorschach sits down, but Dan can feel the waves of barely suppressed rage radiating off of him, his eyes fixed on the crack in the plaster wall, knuckles white where they clutch at the knees of his jeans. Dan runs a hand over the ridges of his spine—he means it to be soothing, but Rorschach just flinches. "I'm sorry," Dan whispers.

"Why?"

"I should have…I don't know." God, he's so hard to talk to sometimes. "I should have realized it'd be something like this."

"Like what?" His voice is low, practically a growl. "No pity, Daniel. Never pity."

"I don't—" and he reaches out again, pathetically. Rorschach pushes away and limps over to where his trenchcoat is draped over the chair, picks it up and shrugs himself into with some difficulty.

"Going out."

"You can't. Look, you must be tired. I'm tired. Just—come to bed, will you? I'll sleep in the chair if you…" No, no, that wasn't going to work. Rorschach just stares at him, eyes dark and empty, and with that coat, his face half in shadows underneath his fedora, he might as well still be wearing the mask. "Please."

Rorschach turns from him and says, "No," and slips out the door.

Dan seizes fistfuls of the duvet cover, restrains himself, doesn't run after Rorschach to stop him. He turns on the TV, presses the remote through static and late-night talk shows. He tries not to think of his partner, alone and in pain and wandering the streets of a strange city looking for a fight.

This is so stupid, he thinks, unearthing the past as though it would change _anything_, some crackpot idea he might find on one of Veidt's self-help tapes. Nostalgia never makes anything better. It leaves you lost, aching for a chance to say the right things, to remake the past. It leaves you longing to apologize for not fighting hard enough, for not being strong enough, for standing by while your home burns. For being thirty-five minutes and forty-five years too late to rescue the person you care most about in the world.

He slams his head against the pillow, slides down into the bed, and loathing himself as he does it, fumbles with the button on his fly. He thinks of his partner half asleep and tangled in the bed sheets, and they would wake up like this, some mornings, having shifted closer during the night, unintentional of course but now we're here and it's not like we have to get _up_ right away. Imagines it's Rorschach's hand, callused and rough, sliding into his boxers, closing around his dick.

No. Better to think of his partner as he was before—as they never were together—masked and powerful and unbroken, the inkblots shifting and changing as his lips crush against Dan's. There is nothing beneath that armor of latex, he thinks, no hollow eyes, no skin, no scars. The man above him, fierce and brutal and uncompromising, was never Walter Kovacs, and he doesn't hesitate as he fucks the man who was never Daniel Dreiberg against the console of the Archimedes.

He screws his eyes shut so that he can see pinpricks of color bursting against the darkness of his closed lids, and it's enough, he's so close, and then there's the black-and-white photograph of the boy in the too-large suit and his cock goes limp under his fingers. He swears loudly and zips back up.

On the television, a blond man and woman writhe in each other's embrace, engulfed in the golden light of a rising sun. Long past the point of exhaustion now, Dan can only watch, mute and bleary-eyed, as he waits for the sound of footsteps outside the motel room door.

* * *

  
Dan isn't sure how long he's been asleep. The winter-bright light through the blinds pricks his eyes, and he groans and yanks the bed sheet over his face. It is torn from him just as quickly.

"Time to leave. Brought you coffee."

Dan's arm flops over on the nightstand, scrabbling for his glasses. The room in focus again, he pushes himself up. Rorschach sits in the chair by the window, holding a Styrofoam cup in his hands, an olive branch bought with change from Dan's wallet. Dan swings his legs over the side of the bed and leans out to take it. No milk, too much sugar—funny, almost the same way Laurie took it. It's disgusting but he gulps it down anyway because, hey, he appreciates the gesture. _Forgiven,_ he thinks, _at least a little_.

That, or Rorschach doesn't know how to drive a car.

"Where are we going?" He tries not to sound too enthusiastic, but he's glad to see Rorschach giving orders again and assuming that Dan will follow them. Which he will, he always will, and it's better than seeing his partner stare listlessly at the road ahead, a disinterested bystander in the grotesque theater of his own childhood.

"Made some inquiries while you were sleeping. Need to go to St. Louis."

"Mmmfh." Dan crunches the cup and tosses it into the waste bin. "What's there?"

"Military records. Discharge papers." The monotone rasp gives nothing away, neither relief that Charlie Dewitt survived the war, nor disappointment that death wasn't what stopped him from coming back to save his son.

Half an hour later, they're on the I-70, beneath a bleak, grey sky, past masses of bare trees and electrical towers. Rorschach doesn't talk, and Dan doesn't want to disrupt their tentative truce by provoking him again, so he concentrates on the road and whether or not the car is, indeed, making some funny noises.

Two hours later, the road is blasted from clear-cut hills, and the dashboard lights up all over the place as the car rocks over potholes and patches of ice. They look at each other and it feels horribly familiar and Dan rolls his eyes.

The car limps almost as far as the next town before it coughs blue smoke and swerves into the ditch.

* * *

  
So they're in a bar, because one look at the garage's estimate and Dan _needs_ a drink, and while the jukebox plays horrible country tunes, it's noisy enough to be an alibi; they can avoid conversation and it won't be all that awkward. The bar is the only bar in town, and it's crowded, Friday night and there's nothing else to do here. Men jostle one another, sweating under thick lumberjack coats, vying for the attention of a handful of women with teased hair and foundation-caked faces. The car will be fixed by tomorrow afternoon, Dan reminds himself, even if he has to bust into the garage and do it himself.

He watches Rorschach pour sugar into his Coke and somehow fails to be properly disgusted. He wonders when sick fascination turned into just plain fascination and stares into the bottom of his own beer.

A slow song comes on the jukebox and a hand, with ruby nails and too many rings, touches his shoulder. The woman is young, pretty by the standards of the bar's clientele. In a few years she'll be fat; now her curves are inviting, familiar. She has long, chestnut brown hair and she smells like cigarettes and that's why, when she murmurs that she hasn't seen him around these parts before, he stands up with an apologetic glance at his partner and accepts the invitation to dance. She's warm and she fills his arms, and he leans his chin on the top of her head. He's never been much of a dancer, but they sway together, her hands on his hips, and when they come around so he's facing the table where Rorschach hunches over his Coke, he closes his eyes and turns his cheek into the girl's hair.

"Whatcha doing all the way out here, city boy?" She has the slightest Appalachian lilt, and she's trying too hard, he thinks, squeezing him a little too tightly.

"Just passing though. My car broke down. How did you know I was—"

"It's written all over you. And your friend. _Especially_ him. So." She laughs, and he likes her laugh, hasn't really heard anyone laugh like that in a long time. "Are you running someplace, or running away from someplace?"

Another slow revolution across a floor sticky with spilled drink, the beer turning the edges of his vision soft. "Both, I guess."

"New York?"

"Yeah." And this time, he doesn't ask how she can tell, because it doesn't need to be his accent, because he knows that the scents of blood and ash cling to him, no matter how many showers he takes, no matter how far he runs.

"I'm sorry," she says, and he wants to melt into her sympathy, drown in it. Wants to stay, because this bar is every redneck bar from one coast to the other, frozen in time where neither Armageddon nor Utopia may touch it. "Who did you lose?"

He presses a kiss into the hairspray-stiff side of her head, sucks the bitter taste from his lips, and hopes that Rorschach can't see. "Everyone," he says. "Everyone but _him_."

The song changes, and for a moment he stays there, arms draped heavily across her back, and in the gap he can hear the rise of men's voices, rough and angry.

"Faggot. What're you staring at, faggot?"

The girl breaks away from him and rushes to the side of one of the three large men who are looming menacingly close to where Rorschach sits. Dan sways on his feet, cursing his luck with women who have gigantic ex-boyfriends and women in general, really, and one of the man's other friends bends his forearms painfully behind his back.

Rorschach looks up from his Coke as though he's just noticed the commotion. "Leave," he says to the mullet-sporting guy who's just called him a faggot, who shows no intention of backing off. "Not request. Warning."

The guy snorts. "What's with this retard?" He moves in closer, and Rorschach finishes his drink. Dan has enough time to think, _oh shit oh shit_ and the guy swings a meaty fist. Rorschach dodges it and the hand comes down hard on the table in front of him, rattling the glasses. Before he can pull back, Rorschach grabs him by the elbow and slams his wrist into the table with a sickening crack.

"Try again."

Dan kicks backwards at the man restraining him, twisting to toss him into the bar. He sees the first attacker reel, clutching his shattered hand while the two others push the girl aside, and he meets Rorschach's eyes from across the floor.

He knows this: Glass, in its natural form, is fragile. Only when broken does it become a formidable weapon.

Rorschach doesn't bother looking at the two men gunning for him. When he smashes his glass against the side of the table and slams it into the face of one of his assailants, he is still staring at Dan. The girl shrieks. He ignores her, intent on dragging the remaining Goliath away from his partner. The guy elbows him, knocking his glasses askew, but Dan manages to haul him up so Rorschach can punch him in the nose.

Rorschach slips out from behind the table and kicks one of the felled rednecks in the face. "Anyway," he says, almost conversationally. "Not a faggot." He looks up at Dan. "Next time, perhaps wiser choice of dance partners?"

Dan says, "I'll keep it in mind" as they stagger out of the bar and out into the crisp December night.

* * *

  
Snowflakes dampen his coat, melting against his cheeks and jolting him out of the remains of his earlier drunken stupor. His body, coursing with adrenaline, hasn't realized that the danger is over; hysterical, uncontrollable violence threatens to bubble up in him at any moment.

"Ah, so..." Dan can't really bring himself to apologize again, seeing as he didn't know that the girl was just trying to make someone jealous, or that said someone had a lot of large friends, and besides, he's pretty sure that Rorschach _enjoyed_ that. His fists are balled up, like he's still bracing himself for a fight, flecks of browning blood clinging to his face. "Just like old times, huh?"

Rorschach stops in the light of a single streetlamp. It casts him in harsh shadows, blackens his eyes and the hollows beneath his cheekbones. It's too easy, Dan thinks, to forget what he is, what he's capable of. Just because Dan knows a little more of his story, has seen his face, seen him beaten down and bleeding—that doesn't change who he _is_.

"Must be more careful," Rorschach says grimly. "Can't attract attention."

"You're one to talk." Dan takes a few halting steps towards his partner. "Are you okay? You look—" _Predatory. Like you're teetering on a knife's edge._ "…distracted."

"Fine."

"Right. Of course you are." He catches their reflections, distorted in the funhouse mirror of a shop window. Main Street is nearly empty. Everyone's drinking at the bar, or at home, safe in warm beds. In a town where teenagers huff glue and once in a decade a man might turn a shotgun on his wife and children, no one patrols the streets and watches for movement in the shadows. No one but them, tonight. They are strangers here, alone in the sleeping town that they'll leave tomorrow.

So this is almost permissible, he thinks, pinning Rorschach against the streetlamp with one hand while running his thumb over the smaller man's stubbly jaw. Almost like being free. "Thanks for saving my ass back there."

"Could say the same," Rorschach mutters, avoiding Dan's eyes. Even half-starved, the fight straining his still-healing muscles and probably tearing out some of the stitches in his back, he could push Dan away if he wanted to. He doesn't. His breath comes in heavy puffs, blue in the freezing night air, fogging up Dan's glasses.

Dan tugs at the knot in his scarf—its once-immaculate white tarnished with grime and bloodstains—wraps the end around his own fist, loosening it enough to expose his partner's throat. He makes as if to bite him, and instead, presses his lips, ever so softly, against the side of Rorschach's neck, tastes the frantic pulse beneath goosebumped skin. Trails his mouth, excruciatingly slowly, to the pit of his throat. His partner growls in frustration and grinds against him, arousal pressing into Dan's thigh, gloved hands circling around his broad back beneath his overcoat, clutching fistfuls of his sweater.

"Want this?" Dan murmurs. The response is a whine and an uncoordinated grope at his ass. He almost laughs but Rorschach is so serious, so desperate with want that Dan's heart gives a peculiar twist, and besides, you don't laugh at a guy who is quite capable of braining you on the fire hydrant two feet away. He's not the one who instigates this—never is, wouldn't know what the hell to do, the poor bastard—but he's always the one in control.

"Not here," Rorschach manages to grit out, and it's hard to think because it's been such a long time, and this thing is still all so weird and new, and Dan is a bit worried that if he lets go Rorschach is going to just disappear into the shadows again, and _God_, he's all fire and furious energy, a stray cat that will let you stroke its ears and then shred your skin with its claws. But he's right, they're out in the open here, and it's tempting fate to be a block away from the bar where you just beat up four men for accusing you of the very sins you're about to commit.

They stumble, leaning on one another, to a house with darkened windows and a pick-up truck on bricks parked in a snow-draped yard. Behind the house is a tool shed, and Dan briefly marvels that it's unlocked, that there are still people in the world so very trusting. He sweeps sawdust off the workbenches, pushes them together, and spreads his coat over top of them. They huddle together, shivering.

Dan blows into his hands and slides them under Rorschach's shirt, raking nails across bumpy ribs. His partner's skin is fever-hot and gradually, sensation returns to his fingertips.

"Like that?" In response, Rorschach arches against him and mumbles something incomprehensible into his sweater. He bats ineffectually against Dan's face, trying to push him away and draw him closer at the same time, and Dan catches two gloved fingers in his mouth, sucks at them as though he expects Rorschach to feel it, as if costume and man were one and the same.

Absurd, really, dry-humping like two teenagers on benches too narrow to support them both comfortably, fumbling for the bits of each other's skin not covered by layers of wool and canvas. The wind builds to a howl, shaking the walls and rattling saws and hammers. When was it, he wonders, that he started to _want_ this so much?

He pushes Rorschach down and tugs his jeans down on his hips, ignores the whimper of protest when his partner realizes what he has in mind. "Shhh." He means it to be reassuring, but it comes out more like a command. At the first contact with Dan's mouth, he goes completely still, and Dan traces his tongue across his length—making it up as he goes along, really, he's only ever been on the receiving end before—then takes him in. Rorschach moans and grabs for his hand, squeezes so tightly that tears threaten to spring to Dan's eyes. He lasts all of a few seconds and Dan chokes, unprepared, and coughs the issue onto the floor.

Rorschach, visibly shaking, shifts on the benches so that they're face-to-face and awkwardly nuzzles into Dan's shoulder. "You?"

He's not sure the tactful way to mention that he can't really stay hard in this temperature. "Uh. No, it's—you don't have to. It's all right."

"Hnnk. Appreciated," and wraps the open flap of his trenchcoat, as best he can manage, over both of their bodies, the jagged spikes of his hair tickling Dan's nostrils.

"Just…"

"Nrg?"

"…just don't take off, okay? Don't run away this time."

"Can't drive, Daniel. Won't get far."

"Goodnight, then."

"Night."


	3. A Soldier's Things

**A Soldier's Things**  
_  
"you fit into me  
like a hook into an eye_

a fish hook  
an open eye"  
—Margaret Atwood

"Downshift! No, not that, the other way." Dan grabs his partner's hand, white-knuckled on the clutch, and shifts the car into second gear. "Pull off to the side. You're going to get us killed."

"Your idea." Rorschach turns the wheel so hard that Dan all but flies into the passenger-side window. Dan manages to regain control before they go spinning into the ditch and they roll to a stop.

"How is it that you can pilot Archie but you never learned how to drive a car?" He runs a hand through his hair, now damp with sweat. "Never mind, I think I can guess. Just—I'm going to take the wheel now, okay? You scare me."

Rorschach shrugs and unlocks the car door, utterly unaffected by his own terrifying driving. "Thank you, Daniel. Was educational."

"You're psychotic," Dan retorts. "And when this snow melts, I'm going to teach you to drive. In a parking lot. Preferably one very far away from any actual people." He means it as more than gentle derision—it's a promise, somehow, that they'll live through this winter, that the world will last long enough to thaw.

His heart still pounding wildly, he switches places with Rorschach and starts the engine again. The poor car has been through enough. He strokes its steering wheel, silently asking it to forgive him for letting Rorschach abuse it, willing it to take them the rest of the way to Missouri—and back—without breaking down again. He hasn't considered the return trip, hasn't thought much lately about going back to New York, what their lives will be like then.

He pays for a motel room off the I-70. It's too late to visit the archives, too late to do anything besides lie in bed and half-listen to the news on TV, drifting in and out of sleep. Rorschach paces restlessly for a few minutes, makes a faintly annoyed sound, and climbs into bed next to him, close enough that Dan can feel the hairs on his arm, but not _really_ touching him.

On the television, two pundits are having a debate about whether the city should drop the ball in Times Square on New Year's Eve in a week. Dan wants to smack them both. It's _his_ city, his and Rorschach's and the city of every would-be rescuer in a particle mask and coveralls. And now it's the property of the same country that, before the monster, scorned it as a hotbed of crime and corruption. Of the world for which it was sacrificed.

"Does it get to you?" he asks, an absurd question when he's fairly certain that Rorschach would have rather died along with most of the city than live in the aftermath. But his partner just takes the remote from him, his hand lingering for a split second too long over Dan's, and shuts off the television.

"Vultures," he says. "Feed on bloated carcasses left by real killer. Save your rage, Daniel."

"Hey. Good advice," Dan replies, and Rorschach glares at him.

* * *

  
He wakes up to the sound of running water; still groggy, tries to figure out where it's coming from, and then snaps wide awake when he sees Rorschach emerge from the bathroom, face shaved, his hair leaking droplets of water on the shoulders of his rumpled, but relatively clean, pinstriped suit. Dan blinks, trying to reconcile a great number of incongruous things simultaneously, and bites his tongue to avoid asking the obvious tactless question.

"Records stored at military archives," Rorschach says, trying, and failing, to slick down the damp spikes of hair that insist on springing back up. "Presentable?"

"Um," Dan says, because throwing Rorschach on the bed and having his way with him when there's a real bed present and he smells _good_ for once is apparently the wrong thing to do, though his brain can't quite tease out the reason why. "Yes."

"Should shave as well. And cut hair. Look like hippie." He's about to protest when he catches a glimpse of his own reflection in the mirrored bathroom door, and, okay, Rorschach might be a jerk, but it's sort of true.

Several hours later, caffeinated and looking almost like respectable citizens, they're in front of a desk, having a terse discussion with the resident archivist about the minutia of the Freedom of Information Act. She huffs a great deal and finally retrieves a thin file with everything she's allowed to tell an utter stranger who won't reveal his interest in the man in question.

Lieutenant Charles Dewitt did not, as his son grew up believing, die fighting the Nazis. He stepped off a navy vessel in San Diego with an honorable discharge and shrapnel still embedded in his eye a year before Truman dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There's service number, and a photograph of him, the flag draped in the background, and he has brush-cut hair that won't stay down, and freckles, and the archivist looks at Rorschach and says, "Oh."

Dan puts a hand on his partner's back. Rorschach shrugs him off, but there's no effort in it. He studies the face—handsomer than his own, but the eyes just as cold, staring off somewhere beyond the camera.

"Date of death?" he asks.

"There, uh." She shuffles through the papers again, but there are only a few sheets, and it's more a gesture than anything else. "Isn't."

"He's still _alive_?" Dan splutters.

She frowns and types something into the computer. "There's no record after 1971. That could mean a lot of things, but…" She taps her fingers on the counter and bites her lip. "Look, this probably isn't going to change your mind about anything, but, I'm adopted too, and a few years ago I tried to track down my biological parents and—it's just heartbreak, you know? Your family's the people who raised—"

Dan shoots her a look that he genuinely hopes says: _Lady, don't even think about starting this conversation._

"There's one other thing," she says, her voice hushed. "I don't know if it's current, but there's an address in the database. It might be contact information. Probably a place of work." Before she can protest that she isn't allowed to divulge it, that her very job is on the line, Rorschach twists the monitor around, startling her, no longer the vulnerable lost son seeking his father, but someone else, a stranger with murder written in his eyes.

And then he's gone, a whisper of pinstriped fabric and footsteps retreating down a polished floor. Dan stares at the archivist, her fingers pressed to her lips, her day far more _interesting_ than she'd probably bargained for. And then he looks at the computer screen and once again, feels the great machinery of other men's plans creak into motion.

"I don't get it," the woman says. "What is it? What's Dimensional Developments?"

"Nothing." He glances down the lobby as the revolving door slows to a stop. "Just forget about it."

"But—"

"No." He remembers, abruptly, that _he_ can be frighteningly intense too, when he wants to be. "I mean _forget about it_," and steps, grudgingly, back into a life that, he has to admit, never really belonged to him anyway.

* * *

Somewhere, there are three very different men, bound to trace the steps of a complicated dance. None sees the complete pattern traveled, only where he crosses another's path— a shadow falling across the face of the sun, a sudden reversal where the lover becomes the beloved. Each of these men believes that he is free, but the moment one pulls away, another draws him back in—they are trapped together like this—and he tells himself that this is what he has chosen.

They will perform this dance forever. Until they are dead, until the world dies with them or else leaves them behind, relics of a lost era.

He sits on the hood of his electric car and gazes up at the stars, though he knows they hold no answers, that the secrets of the cosmos belong to other men and women, are only matter and dust and space anyway. Still, he looks up at the sky and thinks it must mean something more than that. Something has to.

Not for the first time, Dan wishes that Hollis were still alive. Everything's coming apart at the seams again. He needs sanity now. Instead, he has Rorschach.

"Shouldn't be out in the open," a gravelly voice says from behind him. "Being watched."

"He might be bugging the motel room too."

"Hurm. Probably right." It almost sounds like _approval_, and Dan feels guilty as hell for encouraging his partner's paranoia. But it isn't paranoia, is it? Not if every road, even this innocent detour, leads somehow back to Adrian fucking Veidt. They live in an age of gods and monsters, and Dan has no doubt in Veidt's practically infinite capabilities. But there has to be a limit to how much one man, even the smartest man, can manipulate.

He lies back against the windshield, arm trailing off the side of the car to nudge Rorschach closer. His partner slumps against the front wheel, his head just beneath Dan's fingers. Nothing's real, he thinks, not this tenuous bond between them—that, too, was Veidt's doing, though probably inadvertent. Or maybe not. If the conspiracy goes back to Rorschach's father, how real is Rorschach?

"Where were you all day, anyway?"

"Went for a walk. Needed to think."

Dan twists a curl of copper hair between his thumb and forefinger, and Rorschach lets him, which is probably a bad sign. "You're going to run away again," he says.

"Conspiracy deeper than initially assumed. Personal now."

"Or a really big coincidence." Except that Dan himself doesn't really believe that. "Don't go. Whatever it is, whatever the reason, it's in the past. It's all over—everything's over. Veidt won, and there's no one left to save."

"Can't ignore this. What would you have me do?"

_Stay with me,_ he wants to say. _Not in New York, no, too many bad memories there, too much temptation. We'll go somewhere else, somewhere far away where no one knows us, some small town like the kind that only exists in commercials, where people leave their doors unlocked and if a neighbor cries out in the night, they come outside to help._

"Not get yourself killed," he says lamely.

He feels Rorschach lean into his hand, ever so slightly. "We never die in bed, Daniel."

"What if I stopped you?"

He can't see his partner's face, but he hears the dismissive snort. "Never could. Wouldn't anyway. Veidt chooses agents poorly. Loyalties divided."

"I'm not…" He hates that Veidt's interests and his own align so closely, hates that he's a traitor, against his own will, without having to do anything at all. He hates that Rorschach, who has never given up a grudge in his life, forgives him for it. "I was trying to get you away from him. Keep you _safe_."

Rorschach climbs to his feet. He looks tired, Dan thinks, the lines in his face pronounced. "Sentiment appreciated, if misguided." He takes Dan's hand in his gloved fingers, presses it in his palm. Dan is reminded of how cold he is, not at all dressed for this weather, but maybe it's for the best. Maybe this pain, this constant slow burn that threatens to devour him, will freeze along with his skin. "Thank you for this, Daniel. Have always been a good friend." He lets Dan's arm fall back against his chest and jams his hands into his pockets, hunches against the wind as he heads for the highway.

* * *

  
He drives for an hour, rehearsing in his head what he's going to say, pulling over to the side every now and against to thump the steering wheel in frustration, before he sees the lone figure following the road, the collar of his suit jacket turned up though it can't offer much warmth in this wind. Dan flashes the lights, startling his partner, slows the car to a stop, and pushes the door open.

"Were you planning to walk all the way to California?" Rorschach stands there, head down, kicking at the snow with the toe of his boot like a kid caught stealing. "Get in."

"Won't talk me out of it."

"I'm not trying to. Get in. You must be freezing."

Rorschach hesitates, leaning heavily on the doorframe, as if evaluating something in Dan's voice. He must have passed the test, though, because Rorschach exhales sharply and slips into the passenger seat, slamming the door shut.

"Not entirely without resources. Can take Greyhound. Hitchhike. What are you doing here, Daniel?"

"You left your hat in the motel room," Dan says.

Rorschach stares at him, and if he were a different sort of person, they would both be breaking into peals of laughter right about now. Even still, Dan feels that old glimmer of camaraderie return, tentative though it might be. Rorschach turns around in the seat and there it is, his fedora sitting like a smug cat on top of the duffle bags with their meager possessions hastily crammed inside.

"So, here's the thing. I know you were beating up criminals before I showed up on the scene, and long after I quit, and you do stupid heroic things on principle and I'm never going to be able to change that. You're right. It's why I—anyway." He slams his head back against the headrest; this isn't how he'd meant it to go at all. "What were you going to do? Storm the building and start breaking fingers until you found out what the connection was between your father and Veidt?"

The silence from the passenger side tells Dan that this was _exactly_ what Rorschach had in mind.

"No. Just…no. He'll kill you."

"Probably."

Dan wants to reach over and hug him and tell him that his life is worth more than that, that there's a time when it becomes harder to survive in the world, in all of its imperfections and shades of grey, than to die in a bright flash of martyrdom. But Rorschach is right about that, too, he won't change, and Adrian Veidt is more of an obsession for him than Dan could ever be.

"I'm coming with you, then." He starts the engine, stares down the desolate stretch of road in front of them. In the dim corona of the headlights, it retreats into eternity. It's a long way to the warehouse in San Francisco, if the place is even still there. He desperately hopes that it isn't.

"Not your fight. Made that much clear. Willing to compromise."

"Isn't that what I'm doing now?"

"Hurm." Rorschach considers this, though it's a moot point—they're driving, and Dan doubts that his death wish extends to jumping out of moving cars to avoid conversations he doesn't want to have. Though one never knows with him. "Always worked better as a team," he manages, and Dan has a hard time not grinning a little at that. Rorschach made him feel invulnerable once, more than even the costume and the gadgets did, back when they were young and fearless and the fate of the world didn't hang in the balance.

"Besides," Dan says. "No one would ever pick you up hitchhiking. Especially at this hour. You're kind of terrifying."

The other man is quiet, and Dan is momentarily worried that he might have pushed too far, hit another sensitive spot. They were only just barely friends again in those awful days between Blake's murder and the monster's death throes, and the weeks since have been…unpredictable. He glances to his right and sees that Rorschach is watching him, expressionless and unblinking.

"Glad you're here, Daniel," he says, his voice softer than usual.

"Me too," and mostly means it.

* * *

  
The first light of dawn breaks over skeletons of trees, and Dan, his driving rapidly becoming as questionable as his partner's, pulls into the first rest stop he can find across from a rusting pickup with a bumper sticker of the Manhattan skyline, the words "Never Forget" in red and blue below it. He leans his face against the window and closes his eyes. He drifts in and out of sleep, exhaustion fighting terror, the nightmares coiling at the edges of his consciousness. Rorschach twitches beside him, making strange noises and scowling in his sleep. He manages to somehow curl up so that he's lying against Dan's arm, the emergency brake pressing into his side, and Dan doesn't have the heart to move him. He watches the sky blossom into purple and orange, and feels his partner shudder awake with a muttered "Nrg."

"Hey," Dan whispers, too gently. Rorschach mumbles something and sits up, avoiding Dan's eyes, like he's embarrassed. "It's okay," Dan tells him. "I get nightmares too. Everyone does. The monster—"

"Not," Rorschach says, "about monster."

"Oh."

"Unimportant," and that should end the conversation, even though he's still shaking. But Dan can never leave a scab unscratched, even when he knows it will heal faster if he just leaves it alone.

"You can tell me about these things, you know," he says, feeling pathetic even as he says it. That earns him a huff, a warning. "You don't have to be alone all the time."

"Not alone." Rorschach grumbles. "Also not writing tell-all memoir."

"I always wondered what you were writing in that thing." His partner glowers. "Never mind." He reaches over, puts a hand on Rorschach's arm.

"Daniel…" It's practically a growl, and Dan knows he shouldn't push it. They've only just made up, _again_, but he never thinks clearly first thing in the morning. He climbs over the emergency break to kneel in the cramped space between the dashboard and the pushed-back seat. Rorschach makes one half-hearted attempt to shove him away and then lets Dan slide his hands inside his jacket, barely whispering across his chest before trapping him against the seat. He squirms, and Dan holds him still until he finally looks up, eyes wide, irises swallowed by black. His fingernails bite into Dan's neck to draw him closer.

Dan hasn't done anything remotely like this since he was a kid—grown men with their own townhouses and airships don't make out in cars—and it's significantly more uncomfortable than he remembered. His shin bangs against the clutch as he tries to balance over his partner without crushing him, the seat caging them in. It means something, he thinks, this fumbling in the dark, cold fingers pressed together as he strokes his partner to arousal through the thin purple cotton of his pants, feels his own skin electrify beneath his sweater. Even if their fates were decided long ago by something much greater than either of them, a force more powerful than that which beats a mugger into submission or rescues a woman walking alone at night—at least, he thinks, at least they chose this.

There's a loud rap on the window. Rorschach recoils, twisting his face into the seat, and Dan jerks his head up to see a cop tapping the glass on the driver's side. Belatedly, heat rising to his cheeks, he remembers the _other_ reason why he doesn't screw around in cars anymore. He flails over to the door and unrolls the window. "…Hi."

"Move along," the cop says, not in the least bit taken aback by the less-than-attractive spectacle of two middle-aged men in a compromising position. A frustrated rattle escapes Rorschach's lips, and Dan is mildly relieved that he never got his grappling gun back from the evidence locker.

"Yessirabsolutelysir." He floors the pedal, drawing a whine from the engine, and swings the car drunkenly out onto the highway. Wind blasts through the opened window, and when he glances at the rearview mirror, the road behind them is clear. He turns off at the next side road, laughter convulsing his shoulders.

"Not funny," Rorschach snaps.

"Oh, come on." Dan slides across to his seat. "It was, a little."

"Could have been recognized. Could have—"

"Rorschach," Dan says. "Shut up," and sweeps him into a bruising kiss.

This time, the laziness of his early morning stupor evaporated, they don't linger. Rorschach is frantic as he tugs at Dan's belt, nips Dan's throat, struggling and gasping like he doesn't know the difference between fighting and fucking. Dan's wrist bangs against the lid of the glove compartment before he manages to open it and retrieve the lube. When he slides inside his partner—moans as the muscles convulse and Rorschach hisses through his teeth—it's an act of mercy.

The world explodes into patterns, mirror images of light and dark. He bites into his sleeve to stop himself from crying out. He feels Rorschach go slack beneath him, liquid warmth between their bodies, dazed enough that Dan can hold him and thread fingers through his hair.

"You okay?" he asks, like a complete idiot.

Rorschach, gone completely quiet, nods against his chest. Dan thinks he's fallen asleep, pressed up against the seat, and then he murmurs, "Daniel?"

"Yeah."

"Dream about the dogs."

Dan doesn't know what he's talking about, but he squeezes his partner's shoulder and stays there, just a moment longer.

* * *

  
The pyramid, carved from pink stone and long-abandoned, casts a shadow that stretches across the dirt road, almost to the car. They stand by a bullet-riddled sign forbidding them to climb it, and look up at the square-jawed face carved in its side.

"It even looks a little like Adrian," Dan says, amused despite himself.

"Would never grow beard," Rorschach replies.

"He would have in the 1880s." And Dan immediately pictures Veidt with a monocle and top hat and has to pretend to cough into his sleeve to hide his snicker. "God, can you imagine? I bet he'd have built himself one of these things."

"Has unusually large sphinx in Virginia," Rorschach deadpans. "Built after return from Mediterranean."

"You're kidding. Oh God. You're not kidding."

"Carved own face on it." Rorschach glances up at the monument to forgotten men's egos, the pyramid in the snow in the middle of nowhere, its portraits crumbling and splattered with bird shit and graffiti. "Never saw pictures. Imagine something more dignified."

"I can't believe you were sitting on that kind of blackmail material. Why didn't you ever say anything?"

"Have much more on him now," Rorschach says dryly.

"How did you even find out? He didn't—"

"Comedian told me," and suddenly, it isn't quite so funny anymore. Dan hopes fervently that Blake got in at least one cutting remark before Veidt hurled him out of his own window. He hopes that they will, when it's their turn to die at Veidt's hands.

Two days lie between this moment, standing with his partner beneath a tacky roadside attraction, and whatever waits for them in South San Francisco. There's a part of him—the part that always was a coward—that wants to take a wrong turn, to surrender his will to the gods that inhabit the empty places along the highway and let the car guide them a million miles away, to the mountains in Denver or the Mojave Desert. To let someone else take up the fight because hell, he doesn't know himself whose side he's on anymore, and he wants so very much to live. For both of them to live.

When they die, he thinks, not even as much as a half-ruined pyramid will stand in their memory, though once, they almost saved the world.

"Should go."

"Yeah. Just a second." He takes a pocketknife and, kneeling by the side of the pyramid, scrapes a small crescent into the face of the rock, beneath declarations of love between couples long parted, disconnected phone numbers and gang signs. He hands the knife to his partner. It's nothing to say, "I was here, I mattered"—but Rorschach nods and, beside the crescent, carves his own symmetrical symbol.

As they walk back towards the car, the snow is already rising to bury their tracks.


	4. Comme je suis libre

**Comme je suis libre**

_  
__"I just wondered what a thing it would be…if overnight everything you owe anything to, justice, or love, had really gone away. Free.  
It would be…heartless terror. Yes. Terrible, and…  
Very great. To shed your skin, every old skin, one by one and then walk away, unencumbered, into the morning." — Tony Kushner, _Angels in America: Millennium Approaches

They outrun the snow, but not the cold. At the end of the road, in a near-deserted industrial district, freezing rain sleets over browned grass and the car windshield and the roof of the warehouse with its darkened windows. The car's battery powered down, hunched over the steering wheel, Dan's skin prickles and he shivers, pulling the sleeves of his overcoat past his hands.

"Can enter through roof." Rorschach's gloved finger traces the line of buildings, the gaps close enough to jump. "A pity we don't have Owlship."

"It'd be conspicuous anyway." This isn't Manhattan; even in the dark, anonymous in street clothes in a civilian car, he still feels exposed. No one has gone in or out of the warehouse in the hour that they've been scoping it out. But that doesn't, he knows from countless stakeouts, mean that there's no one inside. No cars but theirs have passed along this street.

"Able to climb?" His attention is on a fire escape attached to a building blocks away from their target.

"Are you suggesting that I'm old or that I'm fat? Because you're older than—"

"Been some time since crimefighting days. Perhaps you've forgotten how." There's something in Rorschach's voice that tells Dan that he's being teased. He glances over for confirmation, and there it is, the twitch of a muscle around lips that haven't smiled in decades. "Sorry, Daniel. Good of you to come. Don't have to be here."

Dan says, "I kind of do."

Rorschach nods curtly and reaches into the back seat for his fedora. Dan wonders how he can look so much like himself without his mask. It's like he flicks a switch sometimes; in the space of an instant the man whose body writhes in maddened ecstasy beneath his own becomes the cool, remorseless killer. Dan has to remind himself that by whatever vindictive thermodynamic miracle, they are one and the same.

"Time now," he says, his voice like sandpaper.

Dan opens his mouth once, closes it, and finally says, "Rorschach?"

"Yes?"

"It's New Year's Eve."

Rorschach considers this for a moment. "Explains why street is empty. Can't expect that Veidt will—"

"No, I mean…" This isn't a good idea, Dan knows, it's a very _bad_ idea, like all of his ideas turn out to be in the end. But that doesn't stop him from grabbing his partner's wrist where it sits on the armrest. "Didn't you ever want something other than this, running around in shadows and fighting with psychopaths? Just _once_ every so often?"

"Daniel." He thinks that's pain he hears, but it's hard to be certain. "Has nothing to do with want."

"One night," Dan says, and he's begging, pathetic, asking the trivial-but-impossible of a man who doesn't change his mind. "That's all I'm asking. Just one, and we can die _tomorrow_ night."

Rorschach is silent for some time. "Yes."

"Please. I mean—what?"

"Never been to San Francisco."

He beams, and then ducks his head quickly because he's not sure that he wants his partner to see how goddamned _relieved_ he is about a twenty-four-hour stay of execution, for one more sunrise and however many awkward brushes of his hand against a canvas sleeve. He guns the engine and turns the car around, towards the gleaming and distant city.

* * *

Utopia's embrace hasn't quite reached San Francisco. There's a recently-opened Burgers n' Borscht on Market Street; the ubiquitous "One World—One Accord" posters and Millennium billboards stand guard like night watchmen, but the city, even on New Year's Eve, is unnaturally subdued, as haunted by its dead as New York is. Walking skeletons stumble, half-blind, through its streets, bundled beneath thick coats, reaching for each other's arms.

Dan—who came here once as a boy, when it was an entirely different sort of neighborhood—had assumed that the Castro would grievously offend Rorschach's practically Victorian sense of propriety, and it probably does, but they both share an unspoken kinship with these sorry ghosts. They know why they will die, if not exactly how or when; they go to their dinners and parties, rejoice in the company of friends and lovers, all the time doubting that they'll live to see the year turn again.

For all its grief, the city is defiant in the face of its private apocalypse. Triangle flags, sodden with rain, drip like lamb's blood from brightly painted row houses. Among the plague-doomed and the trembling homeless, Dan feels a strange sense of belonging, determined, if he is to die, to die well.

They take shelter in the doorway of a bar; on the other side of a window stippled with rain, men dance in each other's embraces, shards of light from a slow-revolving disco ball falling in their hair. Rorschach watches, fascinated and repulsed, _hurm_ing as though he's just gotten a clue in a particularly grisly murder.

Dan watches too, like he's watched, on occasion, couples in Central Park, wondering what makes men do these things—what he himself might be capable of doing. Thinks, _Are we like this?_ and the reply springs to mind—in Rorschach's monotone—that they are not like other people at all.

"You want to get a coffee?" Dan asks him. He nods, and here, no one will say anything at all if he slips his arm around his partner's waist, if Rorschach leans his head into Dan's shoulder. Instead, they walk just a little _too_ close together, as they did in the old days, not to signal that they are lovers, but to tell the world that they stand apart from it, studying it with the wary eyes of guard dogs, and have only each other to trust.

The diner—and Daniel thrills a little to find a Gunga Diner, as if a small piece of his old city is kept alive here—doesn't serve champagne, but the tandoori is as good as New York's, and a TV mounted by the ceiling shows the countdown in Times Square. The crowds, the announcer says, are the biggest ever, people flooding in to the downtown to remember, to claim some part of this bittersweet, historic moment.

An entire country lies between them and the city they vowed to protect. The distance across the table, where Rorschach's hands close around his cup of sugar-with-some-coffee-in-it, feels just as unbridgeable, but Dan reaches across it anyway, and they both watch the screen.

Miles away, it is a minute to midnight, and a chorus of voices cries out as the ball begins its descent; a handful of drunks at another table join in. The announcer's voice cracks as he proclaims a happy New Year.

Dan raises his coffee cup in a mocking toast; Rorschach pauses, then lifts his own. The clock turns to 12:01, and they will never be rid of the year that lies behind them.

* * *

  
From where they crouch on a roof overlooking rain-slicked SoMa, it's easy to imagine that the city belongs to them. It's always like this, Dan thinks, the world yours when you are just above it, and human beings look so small, oblivious to the things that live in the shadows. He wonders if this is how Veidt feels all the time, how Jon must feel. How Laurie might feel now, when the Earth passes beneath her distant planet.

He should never have asked Rorschach what he wanted to do after they left the diner and the Castro's fierce celebration. This night is no different than any other night.

In the early hours of the morning, a woman stumbles out of a cab, clutching her purse to her chest and gathering her open coat around herself. Her high-heeled boots skid over puddles. She has been told to keep her head raised, her back straight, and she tries, she does, but the rain falls in sheets and she huddles against it, cold and miserable.

The man in pursuit of her is a tourist, dressed for the perpetual summer that he imagines exists out here. He slams the taxi door and claws for her. She's reaching for the pepper spray in her purse even as he tosses her into a stucco wall, the spray paint behind her head like a splatter of blood. She knees him in the groin and tries to run, but her heels catch on the pavement and he's on top of her, hauling her back on her feet before her gravel-sliced palms can push him away.

A car passes the alleyway, and their cruel embrace is silhouetted in its headlights; it slows but doesn't stop. As the dark swells to full between the buildings, Rorschach is already halfway down the fire escape.

Without costumes, without masks, they are only men, older and wearier than the would-be rapist, but the blur of brown and purple that leaps from the side of the building to land on the attacker's back, a sinewy arm hooked beneath his chin, is for that moment something other than human. It's only now, when she's safe but doesn't yet know it, that the woman has the presence of mind to scream. Dan scrambles down the fire escape and pulls her free in time to see the man sag under Rorschach's fists.

"You okay? Do you need a hospital?"

She rubs at the side of her face like she's trying to erase the bruise blooming below her temple. "No, I'm—" He feels her jerk against him as she sees Rorschach yank the seat off a bicycle and ram the rail into the man's head.

"Stop," Dan says, and he's not sure that Rorschach hears him over the roar of the wind, if he'd listen even if he did, but he plants one more vicious kick into the man's ribs and turns. Dan almost expects—

—no, of course he has a face. What was he thinking?

"We should call an ambulance," Dan says.

"I'm fine." The woman pushes away from him, her arms crossed tightly, glancing nervously from one man to the other. "Just a long night, that's all."

"I didn't mean for you."

"Leave it," Rorschach snarls. "Won't matter soon." He circles to Dan's side in a careful perimeter around the woman, who starts to back away. He eyes her short skirt and tall boots with some suspicion. "In future, should dress for weather," he tells her. "Invite trouble, otherwise."

"Yeah," she says. "Uh. Thanks. I'll keep that in mind." She staggers down the alley, checking behind her every few steps to make certain they aren't following.

Dan casts a glance at the man lying in a motionless heap a few feet away. "Is he…?" The burn of his partner's eyes answers the question before he can finish asking it. "Oh."

They make their way back to the motel and the rain drowns out any conversation they might have had.

* * *

  
_"Hay que endurecerse sin perder jamás la ternura." — Ernesto Che Guevara_

Dan doesn't think he's being all that obvious about it until Rorschach tells him, "Scum. Not worth grieving." He takes off his hat and coat and scarf, placing them in a neat pile on the chair. "Can't afford to be soft, Daniel. Not now."

Rorschach stands by the door, ready to bolt if the conversation goes in the wrong direction, soaked to the skin, hair clinging in wet clumps over his skull. There are some things, Dan knows, that can't be changed, can't be undone, some kinds of damage that even the kindest of intentions can't begin to touch.

"You know me better than that," Dan says, and it doesn't sound very convincing. He can still see the man in the alleyway, blood leaking from beneath his ear into oceans of rain. Rorschach nods and stalks past Dan to the washroom.

He's in there for a long time. Dan paces, considers trying to sleep, considers reading the Bible in the nightstand because he's _that_ anxious and there's nothing else to read and the television just makes it _worse_, and finally knocks on the door. There's no response, which is as good as a yes, even if it means crossing yet another one of their unspoken boundaries and probably pissing his partner off beyond belief.

But Rorschach is huddled against the shower wall, the curtain thrown open, torn where he's tugged it to one side. The water is running and he's scrubbing the bloodstains from his hands with a tiny bar of soap. He doesn't look up as Dan enters and sits on the toilet, but he mutters a half-hearted, "Get out."

"No." He reaches over and tilts his partner's chin up, searching for some expression, anything, in his face. The grim set of his mouth doesn't change, and he flinches, tries to break free but not with much effort, and Dan wonders if it's because he's tired or because he somehow wants to be seen like this, wants to show Dan that he's not completely unaffected, that there's something of Walter Kovacs still left in him. He shuts the shower off and grabs a towel from the rack, with some effort, manages to get Rorschach standing and the towel wrapped around him, navigates them both around the pile of filthy, damp clothes and to the bed. He tries to touch his partner as little as possible, but he's distractingly warm against Dan's rain-drenched skin, and _hell_, what if this is their last chance?

He presses his lips to a freckled shoulder, traces his tongue along the line of a scar. So many scars, he thinks; until very recently he was convinced Rorschach was invulnerable, despite having fought the same vicious street battles as Dan, and without armor. One of the stitches in his back has torn in the fight and Dan's mouth follows the smear of blood across his shoulder blade. Rorschach grunts in annoyance.

"What do you want, Daniel?"

There are far too many possible answers to that question, most of them absurd—what does he want? He wants his city back, even for all its flaws and imperfections, its underbelly of despair. He wants the sense of purpose he had as a young man, that constant optimism that told him that he could make the world a better place, that he can empty the sea with a teaspoon if he only tries hard enough. He wants his old friends back, as they should have stayed, careworn and cynical but still _good_, their intentions pure even if they themselves could never be.

Before he can stop himself, he whispers, "I want for all of this to have been real. Not just, I don't know, some distraction, you biding your time until you can finally go out fighting."

Rorschach's shoulders hunch, and Dan is almost glad that he can't see his partner's face. "Sick," Rorschach says quietly. "Wrong. But yes, real."

"And you?" He breathes it into his friend's ear. "What is it that you want?"

Now Rorschach turns, so terrifyingly exposed that Dan wants to look away. "To be last piece of dirt," he says. "After removal, room clean."

That seems as likely to happen as Veidt's perfect and loving world, so Dan leans into him, noses squashed together, his glasses pressing uncomfortably into both of their faces. He feels his partner's hands ghosting over him, hesitating and uncertain, hands that an hour ago beat a stranger to death, and he shivers beneath their touch.

It isn't wrong, he thinks, or maybe it is but the bizarre moral code that they live by doesn't matter when everything they owed loyalty to is gone, shattered into pieces half a world away. He suspects that Rorschach would say that it matters even more, so he keeps those thoughts to himself, takes off his glasses and places them carefully on the nightstand. Rakes his nails over a bony hip, drawing out a hoarse whimper from his partner. His shirt sticks to him, damp with rain and sweat, and Rorschach tears at it until he obligingly peels it over his head. His erection strains against his pants, so those need to go too, and he can feel fevered heat rising to his cheeks, being naked like this, flayed and unmasked.

_This is how ordinary people feel. Powerless, everything stripped away…_

He leans on one elbow and with the other hand, tracks the scars and freckles that mark his partner's body. Rorschach winces and tries to pull him closer, to hide himself under Dan's bulk, but Dan ignores him, continues his teasing exploration until his friend grabs his hand and presses it between his legs.

"Okay," he says, feeling oddly guilty, strokes him, too gently at first, then harder when Rorschach moans and arches up into his fist. He can feel how close his partner is, burning hot beneath his hand, his breathing ragged and his eyes wide and startled.

Dan stops.

Rorschach growls in irritation and flails at him; Dan seizes his wrists and straddles him, pinning him to the bed.

"Daniel." It's somewhere between a plea and a direct order. He thrashes underneath the larger man's weight. "_Daniel._"

"Don't die," Dan says. "I can't stop you from doing whatever you need to do tomorrow, but please. I don't want to lo—just promise me you'll make it out alive." He gets an annoyed _ennk_ in response, every muscle in his partner's compact body straining against him. "Promise me. No fucking heroic last stands."

"Asking too much."

"Yeah," Dan says, and leans in to kiss him. Rorschach whips his head to one side so Dan's mouth catches his cheek instead, tastes sweat and salt. "I know I am. Promise me anyway."

"Can't," he mutters into the pillow. "Won't," and when Dan still won't move, stares up with hungry eyes and gasps, "Yes."

Dan rolls him over and fucks him until he screams.


	5. Showing Me Home

**Showing Me Home**

_"The end of history will be a very sad time." – Francis Fukuyama_

He is back in the diner with Laurie. She is still wearing her costume, snow-bedraggled, teardrops frozen on her eyelashes, trying to get her lighter to work. It sparks, but her cigarette won't catch. Revellers outside wish each other a happy New Year, hug and sob on one another's shoulders in the bitter cold.

"You can still leave this behind, you know," she says. Out of the corner of his vision, she is someone different, her hair blond and blunt-cut below her ears, recognizable only by the birthmark below her eye.

"But I wouldn't." He tents his hands over his coffee cup, feeling the warmth rise into his palms. It isn't enough. "How are you, Laurie?"

"Lonely. I never realized how small we were before. How big the universe is." She smiles wearily and manages to draw out an ember, finally, takes a deep, relieved drag. Smoke billows from her mouth, whirls and eddies around her face. "You've been traveling too."

"A long time, it seems like."

"Did you find what you were looking for?"

"Not yet. Soon, I hope." He carves spirals into the side of the Styrofoam with his thumbnail. "I miss you," he offers.

"Time is not linear. It's always 1985 here. Always New York City, always Mars, always everywhere I'll ever be. But it isn't the same, not when…" He stares at those large, sad eyes. "Would you like to know what happens?"

He almost says yes, but the skin sloughs from her face, revealing glowing blue beneath, and maybe she _does_ really know. "Laurie—what? No. Who would want to know that?"

Her eyes are lit from behind with white heat, and the smoke from her cigarette erupts into an all-consuming flame. The world is on fire. He sees blood running down the face of a clock, a woman covering her face with her hands as she stands amid the devastation, red oozing between her fingers, and he cries out as he opens his eyes.

"Scarier without face." He can't tell how long Rorschach has been awake, watching him, but judging from the dying light of the sun streaming in through the Venetian blinds, it's probably been awhile. "So I'm told."

"Mmm." Dan flicks a stray curl from his partner's forehead, and tries not to imagine waking up beside shifting inkblots, ignores the little thrill he gets from picturing that. "Definitely. You're much more dangerous this way." The shakes subside quickly, as if Rorschach's presence frightens the very nightmares themselves.

"Could still back out," Rorschach says. "Would be understandable."

"Uh huh." As difficult it is to extract himself from the warm bed, he squats on the floor and rifles through his bag until he finds his goggles. The rest of the costume is too conspicuous, and he wouldn't feel right wearing it, not when Rorschach is without his own mask, but having night vision is just _practical_, really.

He looks up—Nite Owl again, maybe for the last time—and says, "I wouldn't dream of it."

* * *

His muscles retain the memory of the steps to their old rooftop dance, the stops and starts, the tense pause before the leap, the exhale that follows it. They cross several blocks like this, a wild midnight run, and he missed it, he _did_. It's another cold night, and the wind batters through their coats, threatens to hurl them off the buildings and into the deserted streets.

_What compels us to do these things? To step outside of the boundaries that govern other men's lives, to stand above the city where there is only one rule—_

_Never look down._

Rorschach turns to face him as he lands, ankles complaining, on the roof of the warehouse. He moves his mouth a few times as if to speak, and then settles for stretching his hand out. Dan clasps it in his own, holds it for a moment too long.

"Whatever happens…" he might have begun, but thinks better of it. "Okay. Let's do this."

Rorschach slips out of his grasp, and, hanging off the side of the roof, swings into a window in a cacophony of broken glass to land, crouched, on a ceiling beam. Dan follows, the ancient wood straining beneath his weight. He climbs down the scaffolding, the metal freezing through his gloves, and stumbles onto a catwalk. Rorschach grunts behind him and turns on his flashlight.

Dan leans into the railing and peers down. The floor is nearly empty; just a few shipping containers lined up behind pillars. There's a trail where the dust is disturbed next to a forklift. The thin beam of the flashlight crosses the floor in a drunken arc, then swerves ahead of them to light the rows of offices along the catwalk. Somewhere below them, a metallic clang rings out, echoing in the vast, open space. Flecks of peeled paint crackle beneath their boots.

They find a computer in one of the offices, sitting on a desk covered with shipping invoices, as still and cold as everything else in the warehouse. Dan wipes dust from the screen with his sleeve, tries the power button while Rorschach leans in the doorframe, holding a metal pipe in one hand. Dan is about to give up on the machine when he sees the plug lying beside the wall, curses the encroaching sense of dread that makes it so goddamned _difficult_ to think clearly, and brings the computer back to life.

It asks him immediately for a password, and of course the password isn't RAMESES II because Veidt, whatever else he may have become, isn't a complete idiot. He swears at it, which doesn't work either, tries BUBASTIS and KARNAK and the names of every dead friend and enemy he can think of. He's about to try, out of desperation, the name of Rorschach's long-lost father when he hears the sizzle of electricity—thunder before lightning—and pain like a thousand barbed fishhooks tears through his seizing body and brings him, trembling, to his knees.

* * *

For a blistering instant, there is nothing in the world but pain.

His nerves are on fire, vision exploding like a firecracker into sparks of white, so all-encompassing that his crash against the edge of the desk doesn't even register. Each gasping breath tears at his burning lungs, and he fights it, fights like he's never fought for anything before, tells himself that if he gives in to the waves of rolling black that threaten to swallow him, he'll never get up again. He staggers a little off the ground and the second shock comes and he knows now to stay right where he is or he'll die.

He can't see where they came from, the black-clad man wielding a stun gun above his neck, or his companion who has Rorschach in a chokehold against the opposite wall. Maybe they were always here, lying in wait. A third man, identically dressed and armed, brushes past them to pick up the wall-mounted phone and bark, "Code White—it's _them_." There's a sound like a foghorn, and one by one, the fluorescent lights in the ceiling turn on.

Rorschach manages to grab a hold of the pipe again and tries to strike his attacker with it, but the man is expecting it and Dan _feels_ the repeated flash of the stun gun into his partner' body more than he hears it, and he winces in sympathy. It takes three shocks to subdue Rorschach, and even twitching on the floor, he's still trying to get back up.

The man by the phone hits a button and a familiar voice, melodious despite the phone's tinny reception, fills the office.

"And we were doing _such_ a good job of staying out of each other's way until now," Adrian Veidt says, sounding genuinely disappointed in both of them.

"Show yourself." Rorschach might be sprawled on a filthy floor with a stun gun pointed at his head, but he still manages to make his words threatening. Dan's not even sure that he'd be able to _speak_ now if he tried. His tongue feels thick and swollen in his mouth.

Veidt laughs. "That might be a little hard. I'm not exactly in your neighborhood. Don't worry, I can see _you_ perfectly well."

Dan imagines him back in Karnak, in front of his wall of television screens, waves of color playing across his perfect face. He looks up at the security camera and tries to scowl, though he doubts he's very menacing. The guard above him presses the toe of a boot into the back of his head.

"Coward," Rorschach snarls. "Flee to safety, leave New York to burn. Leave us to clean up your mess."

There's a huff through a buzz of static. "I raised $80 million for reconstruction efforts in the space of a few days," Veidt says. "What have _you_ done lately?"

Days of ash, of the weight of a human body, of cold nights in cockroach-infested apartments, flash through Dan's mind. It does no good to invoke those hours; they come accompanied by the stranger and more welcome memories that sleep curled inside his chest.

"When will you admit that I was right?" the telephone's speaker asks. "For the first time, all major global hostilities have ceased. Former enemies have laid down their arms and joined forces to fight for humanity. This is the end of history and the beginning of something much greater. This is man, purged of original sin, freed from the burden of the past."

"Take walk in city sometime," Rorschach replies. "Then talk about sin."

"If it weren't for me," Veidt's voice turns acidic, "you wouldn't have a city in the world left to beat up purse-snatchers in."

Their eyes meet from across the floor, a quick and silent consultation, and then Rorschach kicks up at the guard and shoves him through the door, out onto the catwalk. Dan tries the same but his captor is faster, and a series of paralyzing shocks rips through him. He sees Rorschach twist the guard's arms behind him and wrench the stun gun out of his hand. The man by the phone comes running, but his companion is already a human shield. Dan has seen his partner go out of his mind countless times, but now there's nothing he can do but lie on the floor and watch.

It doesn't go on for very long, blast after blast until Dan swears he can smell cooked meat. The second man lunges, and Rorschach pitches his captor-turned-victim at him, takes advantage of the moment of surprise and flings himself on them both, punching and biting at them like a rabid dog. Kicks one man down the stairs and as the other starts to rise, fires the stun gun into his chest and knocks him off the edge of the catwalk.

Rorschach pauses to look over the railing and, apparently satisfied, walks back into the office, blood smeared around his mouth, the tip of his pilfered stun gun crackling with electricity. He makes it inside the door before Dan catches another jolt of pain.

"Don't move," the guard holding him shouts. "One more step and I'll fry your buddy." He fires the gun again, just to drive the point home, and this time Dan can't stifle his scream.

Rorschach freezes. His eyes go to Dan, and the telephone, and then back to Dan, and he doesn't take another step.

"Well, now," Veidt's disembodied voice crows. "This is certainly _interesting._"

* * *

"It seems that we both have each other's attention," Veidt continues. "What is it, exactly, that you're after? I've got facilities all over the country—why didn't you break into one a little closer to home?"

There's a pause as Rorschach contemplates exactly how much to tell the man he's vowed to hunt down and destroy. "Father worked here. Where is he, Veidt?"

Dan is fairly certain that he can _hear_ Veidt rolling his eyes. "Would it kill you to use a possessive pronoun now and then?"

"_My_ father. Worked for you. Dimensional Developments." He looks like he's ready to throttle the telephone, but the guard taps his stun gun against the side of Dan's head, and he forces himself to be still.

Veidt is silent, and that's when it occurs to Dan that he actually _is_ confused, and while he might have been tracking them, lying in wait for them to show up, it's only now that he's learning the reason why. Were Dan not facing the floor, aftershocks of pain still scraping across his brittle nerves, he would have found their situation comically absurd. He feels like a woman who frets about the secrets her lover keeps from her, only to find that he's been plotting all along to surprise her with an engagement ring.

"Daniel," Veidt says slowly. "Is it just me, or is he sounding crazier than usual?"

It takes some effort to speak; his throat is raw and he realizes, belatedly, that it's because he's been screaming. "His name was Charlie Dewitt," Dan says. "The last known address we found for him was a place of work. This warehouse. _Your_ company."

"Where is he?" Rorschach asks again, and he can't quite keep the tremor out of his voice. "What did you do to him? How far back does this go?"

Veidt laughs. "You're serious. You came all this way to…" A beat, then, "You came all this way for nothing. Tens of thousands of people have worked for me. I didn't know most of them, and I didn't know _any_ of them well enough to let them in on what I had planned. It's just a coincidence, I'm afraid."

"Can't be," Rorschach says. "No coincidences. Not with you." And Dan aches for him, because they both know Veidt well enough to hear in his voice when he's lying. He isn't, and if Dewitt was part of some great and terrible mechanism, it was only by happenstance. There is no meaning, not in any of this, just the pathetically mundane story of a man who got a woman pregnant and left, and whose life briefly intersected with the life of another man who saved the world by burning it down.

"Sorry," and Dan thinks he hears something that's half amusement, half pity. "Your father—if that man was your father—was a courier. A delivery boy. A cog in the machine—much like you are, in fact. Much like all of us are, myself included. But then, how many men truly know the effect their lives have on the world?"

"Not cog," Rorschach snarls, and his tone is enough to make the guard jumpy. Dan steels himself, muscles tensed as he anticipates another machine-gun burst of torture. "Made decision of free will to lie, to kill millions, to betray what masks stood for. Did you kill father, too? Never came back." Dan wills him silently to shut _up_, and not just because he fears the pain of the guard's stun gun, but because it's breaking his heart to see the last of his partner's illusions smashed to pieces at Adrian Veidt's feet.

And then Veidt says, with a furious passion that Dan remembers but that nevertheless shakes him to the core: "You think you _understand_." His voice fills the room, and neither of them _want_ to, but they're both looking up, like it's the voice of God speaking through the static. "You believe you've suffered because you had a bad childhood, because you have a little blood on your hands? That isn't suffering, not by a long shot."

Rorschach, unimpressed, replies: "Know real suffering, I presume."

"Do you know why it was New York? I could have dropped the monster on Moscow just as easily. The Aztecs understood; that's why they sacrificed the strongest and most beautiful youths they could find. Not out of hate, you see, not out of jealousy, but out of _love_. Abraham knew it, as he prepared to slaughter his son. That's suffering—taking the thing you love most, and destroying it." He takes a deep breath. "If, of course, there's anything at all that you actually love."

Rorschach doesn't answer, and, Dan thinks, it isn't as though either of them is expecting him to anyway.

"Are we done?" Veidt asks lightly. To the guard, as if they're having a private chat, he says, "Kill them."

The man—unaware in his last moments that he is one of three people in the world to know Veidt's secret, that this knowledge doomed him from the beginning—fires wildly in a shower of sparks before he's overcome by his own weapon, his companion's weapon, and the white-hot vengeance of a maddened vigilante. Dan manages to crawl a few feet away before he collapses, nausea roiling over him, beestings prickling across his skin.

He's barely aware that he's being pulled up, of the leather gloves, warm and slick with fresh blood, batting against his face, trying to keep him from passing out—and, he thinks, sadly, trying to comfort him. "Daniel," Rorschach keeps whispering. "Daniel. Please."

Dan closes his eyes and rests his throbbing head against his partner's shoulder, folds his arms around him, and he isn't sure which one of them is leaning on the other. "It's okay," he says. "I'm still here."

They stay like that for a long time.

* * *

This is the life that Walter Kovacs didn't have.

An old woman opens the door to a small house on a hill outside of the city limits. A cat weaves between her ankles, eyeing her visitors with suspicion. Rain leeches from their coats, and she tells them not to bother taking their shoes off as they come inside; she's cleaning this afternoon anyway, and what's a little more dirt?

Dan is surprised that in the end, all it took was a flip through the phone book and two stilted conversations with unrelated and baffled Dewitts before they found her. She is happy to see them, even when he tells her what it's about. She doesn't, she says, get out much these days, and her children are both in college and live on the other side of the country. And Charlie, well, Charlie…

Rorschach braces his hands on the mantelpiece, staring at the framed photograph: a man with a wandering eye, his wife, their two smiling, redheaded children who didn't grow up in a Bronx tenement, cowering from their mother's johns and from her bouts of hysterical rage. A small and ordinary life, squeezed between needlepoint and porcelain figurines, and dusted lovingly every Sunday afternoon.

"He was never very open about his past," the woman is saying. "I knew he had a history, but—after the war, there were so many things that no one wanted to speak about. And men weren't expected to share their feelings." She puts a hand on Rorschach's arm, pretending not to be revolted by his shabby, bloodstained clothes, at the nightmare apparition in her living room, and he lets her, pretending that he's not disgusted by a woman's touch. "You look like him."

He swallows. "Have been told that."

"I'm not sure what it is that you want to know. He never talked about your mother, or you. He might not have even known."

They are standing in the house where Rorschach's father died—in bed, according to his widow—quietly and unremarkably the same year that his son went searching for a little girl and found two German Shepherds gnawing on her bones. There's nothing they can ask this woman, and so for some time they all stand there in awkward silence until she offers them coffee or tea or maybe, if they want, they should go visit the cemetery where he's buried. She can give them directions.

"Yeah," Dan looks over at his partner, quietly focused on the photograph that Dan wants to smash except it isn't this woman's fault, it isn't the fault of those kids, and so it's wrong to hate them a little on Rorschach's behalf. "I think he'd like that."

"We had a good life," she says abruptly. "It wasn't perfect by any means. There were affairs; we almost got divorced, but you stayed together in those days. You forgave. Not like now. He cared for his family. You—you should know that he was a good man."

Rorschach nods, and still avoiding her eyes, says: "Already knew."

"Do you have a family, Walter?" The words are out of her mouth before her face turns contrite as she remembers that it's one of those questions that you're not supposed to ask New Yorkers.

_This morning, in yet another motel room, drained and damaged and still sleepless, rain thumping against the window, he feels the warm body next to him shift to hold him closer, the faltering touch of fingers tracing the burns on his skin as if to banish them…_

_A mouth claiming his in a kiss that is unsure and inexperienced, eyes wide open as if he doesn't quite believe that he's doing this..._

_And his own realization that comes just as haltingly, that he can still be caught off guard by someone he has known for two decades, that his heart, battered as it is, can still sing…_

"Yes," Rorschach says. "Have family. Would be lost, otherwise."

"Good," she says brightly, writing down an address on a piece of notepaper, utterly unaware of the furtive looks that pass between the two men. "There's nothing in the world more important."

Outside, Rorschach stands by the car, looking out at the late afternoon gleam of the skyline through the rain that drips off the rim of his fedora. Dan watches him for a moment before he slips into the driver's seat and reaches over to unlock the door on the other side.

"You all right?" he asks.

"Veidt still out there. Knows he can't trust you. Probably planning…" Rorschach stops, places his hand over Dan's where it sits on the clutch. "Yes. Am fine, now."

This is the life that Walter Kovacs has instead.

* * *

This story, like so many others, ends in a vast, windswept cemetery.

The identical rows of gravestones and rain soaked flags stretch up and down the hills, blurring together into rippling patterns between palm trees. The black letters etched into white stone say nothing about the man or his legacy, but Dan, keeping a respectful distance away, looks for meaning in them nevertheless.

Rorschach stands before his father's grave with his head bowed, then bends down and plucks a flower from a wreath that someone has placed there. He contemplates it in silence before placing it in the lapel of his trenchcoat and rejoining Dan.

They walk together for some time through a city of ghosts, to where the car waits at the bottom of the hill. "Was it better to not know?" Dan asks finally.

"Always better to know truth," and Dan envies him a little for still being able to believe that. "Daniel?"

"Yeah?"

"What now?"

He admits that he hasn't thought of it. They were prepared to die, after all, and so he hasn't thought about their dwindling cash supply or the very real possibility that his car won't make it all the way back to New York. Nor has he let it sink in that things are different in Veidt's strange and molten new world. That _they_ are different, somehow, stripped of their armor, their skin, their certainties, their secrets raw and exposed.

"We go on," he says quietly. "We endure, like ordinary people endure. We try to repair the world. Even without masks, if we have to."

"Hurm," Rorschach says. "Don't know how."

Dan shrugs, trying to find his keys. "Neither do I. But we'll figure it out." He's relieved at the jingle in the bottom of his pocket; the inside of the car, at least, is warm and dry, even if he has no idea where they're supposed to go from here. Maybe he'll just keep driving, down the coast where the highway hugs the curve of the continent, between the mountains and the ocean, all the way to Tijuana, where they can find new faces and new names and another world that needs saving.

One always finds one's burden again. But for now, he can imagine for a moment that they are free, and the dead lie sleeping in their wake.

* * *

_A/N: Thanks for reading and for all the reviews! I can't figure out how to personally respond because I fail at , so let's just say that you guys make me smile. There is still one more story in this series to go._

_A few people have asked for translations of the non-English titles, so here you go, keeping in mind that my French is comme la merde and my Spanish even worse:_

_"Si vous êtes pris dans le rêve de l'autre, vous êtez foutou.": If you are in the dream of the other, you are fucked._

_"Comme je suis libre": How free I am._

_"Hay que endurecerse sin perder jamás la ternura.": We must endure without ever losing tenderness._


End file.
